Young earth creationists hold that both creation and the evolutionary position are at root tied to worldviews, and because they are both claims about historical (or prehistorical) events, they depend on untestable assumptions. At the same time, young earth creation scientists argue that the young universe view is the explanation that best fits the evidence.

Scientists who advocate an old earth regard young earth creationism as being unscientific. Many do so because they believe that things such as radiometric dating and biological observations have disproved it, and/or for ideological reasons. In addition, these scientists may not be aware of the many anomalies associated with the old earth/universe position.

Scientific

Young earth creationism holds that the scientific evidence is unreasonably interpreted by evolutionists and atheists/naturalists as supporting their point of view, but that the same evidence can be reasonably interpreted by creationists to support the creationary point of view. This imposes a heavy burden on the testability of both theories, which is one of the reasons why some scientists question whether either the creationary or evolutionary view is scientific.

They further argue that the scientific evidence is more consistent with the creationary point of view than the evolutionary point of view.

Critics argue, however, that none of the YEC beliefs are subject to the scientific method, but the same criticism applies to theories promoted by evolutionists. The scientific method includes the process of making predictions based on your starting hypothesis and then performing experiments to verify those predictions, all in a manner that can be reproduced and validated by a peer review process.

Both evolutionary scientists and young earth creation scientists believe that speciation occurs; however, young earth creation scientists state that speciation generally occurs at a much faster rate than evolutionary scientists believe is the case.[11]

The facts 1) that so many cultures and people record a history of a great flood and 2) that geological evidence of a flood exists in almost every area of the earth, show that it is very likely, if not proven that the great flood did take place.[14]

The fact that history only spans a few thousand years evidences a young Earth. If the Earth were millions of years old, then so would civilization be. This is obviously not the case as recorded history only spans a few thousand years and our level of technology would be much more advanced.

Biblical exegesis

Young earth creationism holds that the book of Genesis is historical in nature and that Bible exegesis warrants a six-day creation with each day being 24 hours.[15][16][17]
Andrew Kulikovsky describes it as follows:

The hermeneutic employed by most YECs is best described as the historical-grammatical method in which historical narrative (such as the book of Genesis) is interpreted as literal history, prophecy is interpreted as prophecy, poetry is interpreted as poetry, etc.
[18]

Historical-grammatical exegesis involves a systematic approach to analyzing in detail the historical situation, events and circumstances surrounding the text, and the semantics and syntactical relationships of the words which comprise the text.[19]

Astronomy

The young earth creationism view is that the various astronomical bodies such as planets, stars, and galaxies were supernaturally created and that materialistic explanations of the origins of various astronomical bodies are insufficient and counter evidence.[35] In addition, creationists often cite the secular scientific literature in order to make the case that materialist explanations of various astronomical bodies are inadequate:

“

...most every prediction by theorists about planetary formation has been wrong.[36]

”

“

Attempts to find a plausible naturalistic explanation of the origin of the Solar System began about 350 years ago but have not yet been quantitatively successful, making this one of the oldest unsolved problems in modern science.[37]

”

“

We don’t understand how a single star forms, yet we want to understand how 10 billion stars form.[38]

”

“

We cannot even show convincingly how galaxies, stars, planets, and life arose in the present universe.[39]

”

In 2001, Cristina Chiappini wrote regarding the Milky Way galaxy the following:

". . . it is an elegant structure that shows both order and complexity. . . . The end product is especially remarkable in the light of what is believed to be the starting point: nebulous blobs of gas. How the universe made the Milky Way from such simple beginnings is not altogether clear. - Cristina Chiappini, "The Formation and Evolution of the Milky Way," American Scientist (vol. 89, Nov./Dec. 2001), p. 506.[40]

Dr. Walt Brown provides numerous citations to the secular science literature that corroborate the failings of current old universe paradigm explanations in regards to the planets, stars, and galaxies.[41][42][43]

The Institute for Creation Research has a notable essay by David Coppedge entitled "Mature at Birth: Universe Discredits Evolution" which cites recent findings which challenge an old universe paradigm.[44] In addition, Henry Morris has an essay regarding the subject of the failings of the old universe paradigm entitled "What Astronomers Don't Know".[40]

Starlight and the Age of the Universe

Anti-creationists often claim that starlight from millions of light years away demonstrates that the Biblical timescale of 6,000 years is in error, as insufficient time has passed for the light from distant stars to reach Earth.
Creationists respond in part by pointing out that the popular Big Bang theory has its own star light-travel time problem (the horizon problem), citing the work of Dr. Charles W. Misner.[50]

Secondly, creationists have proposed a number of explanations for the objection, and although none are yet certain, they claim that it shows that the critics' claims that it cannot be explained are unfounded.

Setterfield's decay of the speed of light

One early explanation was that of creationist Barry Setterfield, who proposed that the speed of light was faster in the past.[51]
Critics objected to Setterfield's proposal, including on the grounds that the constancy of the speed of light is one of science's most fundamental laws.[52]
Yet in 1999, John Webb, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues reported astronomical observations suggesting that the value of the fine-structure constant (which is related to the speed of light) may have changed (although the size of the change was much smaller than proposed by Setterfield).
They subsequently published this in 2001 in Physical Review Letters.[52][53]
However, other problems with the proposal has led most creationists to abandon the idea.[54]

Russell Humphreys's model

Creationary physicist Dr. Russell Humphreys proposed a model based on Einstein's law of relativity (as the Big Bang model is), but with a different starting assumption, a bounded universe.
Humphreys's model proposes that God created the universe much smaller than it is now, then expanded it, quoting the Bible saying that God "stretched out the heavens".
In such a scenario, time would pass at different rates on Earth and in outer parts of the universe, so that while 6,000 years went by on Earth, billions of years passed on the outer edge of the universe.
This model is also based on the Genesis account recording the days of creation according to time on Earth, rather than elsewhere.

However, this theory is not without problems. The evidence contradicts Humphrey's assumption that the earth is in a large gravity well. If the earth were in such a gravity well, light from distant galaxies should be blue-shifted. Instead, it is red-shifted. Also, gravitational time dilation, if it existed on such a large scale, should be easily observable. On the contrary, we observe (from the periods of Cepheid variable stars, from orbital rates of binary stars, from supernova extinction rates, from light frequencies, etc.) that such time dilation is minor. It is thought that there is some time dilation corresponding with Hubble's law (i.e., further objects have greater red shifts), but this is due to the well-understood expansion of the universe, and it is not nearly extreme enough to fit more than ten billion years into less than 10,000.[55]

John Hartnett's model

Young earth creationist scientist Dr. John Hartnett proposes a model similar to Humphreys, wherein the Earth was trapped in a time-dilation field caused by extremely strong gravitation during the first few days of creation, from Earth's point of view, while billions of years passed for the rest of the universe.
He attributes the field, its removal and the continued balance in our solar system (after the field was removed) to divine intervention.[56]
Whilst Humphreys' model has time dilation caused only by gravity (per Einstein'sGeneral Theory of Relativity), Hartnett's model also takes into account time dilation caused by motion (God's expansion of the universe) (per Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity).

Biology

According to young-Earth creationists, God separately created each kind of living thing, or baramin, to reproduce "after its kind".
Living things had built into them a capacity for variation and adaptation, but within the limits of their kind.
Genetically, in the case of sexually-reproducing species, much of this is due to the information carried on each living thing's DNA being a subset of the parent's DNA, with the subset of information being selected for by the process known as natural selection (described by a creationist before Darwin wrote about it).
Mutations also play a part in this variation, but only to the extent of destroying genetic information, not creating it.

Many of the ensuing variations have been classified by science as different species, but this speciation is not evolution, as it does not involve the generation of new genetic information and therefore could not have produced the evolutionary "family tree".

YECs believe that most of the world's living things were wiped out by the Great Flood, but that pairs of each kind that could not survive in a flood (i.e. air-breathing, land-dwelling creatures) survived the flood on Noah's Ark, and from the Flood survivors all modern species have descended.

Geology

YECs believe that most rocks were laid down in two main episodes.
The first was during the creation week, particularly when God caused the waters of the Earth to gather together into the sea and dry land to appear.
The second was during Noah's Flood.
The effects of a global watery catastrophe would have been enormous, which would form massive amounts of erosion and sedimentation during a short period of time.
Further, many young-Earth creationists believe that there was a single supercontinent prior to the Flood. This single land mass broke apart during the Flood when the subterranean waters bursted out of the subterranean chambers causing the earth to break apart (see also: Hydroplate Theory). According to many Young earth creationists, there were probably fewer oceans with much more land on the earth prior to the flood. It is believed that the worldwide water quantity increased after the flood. The sea trenches and ocean floors sunk further down after the flood waters subsided, because of the increased pressure of the water, thus causing the sea levels to rise.[57][58][59] Young earth creationists also believe that many of the mountains, valleys, and lakes we see today were formed by the geological transformations caused by the flood. This would have further contributed to a massive reshaping of the Earth's surface.

Anthropology

YECs believe that all intact evidence of civilisation is evidence of post-flood civilisation, as the Flood destroyed the pre-flood world.
God confounded man's single language at the Tower of Babel, forcing different family groups to separate and spread around the world.
Most of the people groups listed in the 'Table of Nations' in Genesis 10 , which contains a family tree of Noah's descendants, are identifiable from non-biblical records.
People enduring a forced migration will find any shelter they can, and this would explain much of the evidence of "cavemen".

Contrasted with evolution

The young earth creationism view contrasts with evolution and other aspects of the old universe view in the following ways:

According to the chronogenealogies in the Bible, the age of the universe and Earth is approximately 6,000 years. The old universe view is that the universe started about 14,000 million(14 billion) years ago and Earth was formed around 4,500 million(4.5 billion) years ago.

The creation account has everything being created over a period of six ordinary days, whereas the old universe view has things appearing over billions of years.

The order of creation is different. The creation account has the Earth before the sun, plants before the sun, and birds before land animals, among other differences. The old universe view is the opposite order for each of these.

The creation account records that death didn't exist prior to the Fall, whereas the evolutionary view is that death and suffering are part of the biological process and existed for billions of years of death prior to the appearance of man.

The creation account records various living things being separately created, whereas the evolutionary view has all living things being descended from the first living cell.

Young Earth creationism is based on the Bible, the infallible Word of God.[60][61]

Criticism

Creationist methodology

Against the Young Earth Creationist attacks on "evolutionism" and "Darwinism", critics argue that every challenge to evolution by YECs is either made in an unscientific fashion, or is readily explainable by science, and that while a gap in scientific knowledge may exist now it is likely to be closed through further research. While scientists acknowledge that there are indeed a number of gaps in the scientific theory, they generally reject the creationist viewpoint that these gaps represent fatal, insurmountable flaws with evolution. Those working in the field who pointed out the gaps in the first place have often explicitly rejected the creationist interpretation. The "God of the gaps" viewpoint has also been criticized by theologians and philosophers,[62] although creationists claim that their models are based on what is known, not on gaps in knowledge.[Citation Needed]

Christian YECs adhere strongly to the concept of biblical inerrancy, which declares the Bible to be divinely inspired and therefore scientifically infallible and non-correctable. This position is considered by devotees and critics alike to be incompatible with the principles of scientific Objectivity. The Young Earth creationist organizations Answers in Genesis (AiG) and Institute for Creation Research (ICR) require all members to pledge support for biblical inerrancy.

YECs often suggest that supporters of evolution theory are primarily motivated by atheism. Critics reject this claim by pointing out that many supporters of evolutionary theory are in fact religious believers, and that major religious groups such as the Roman Catholic Church and Church of England believe that the concept of biological evolution does not imply a rejection of the scriptures. Nor do they support the specific doctrines of biblical inerrancy proposed by YEC. Critics also point out that workers in fields related to evolutionary biology are not required to sign statements of belief in evolution comparable to the biblical inerrancy pledges required by ICR and AiG. This is contrary to the popular belief of creationists that scientists operate on an a priori disbelief in biblical principles.[63] They also discount Christian faith positions, like those of French Jesuit priest, geologist and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who saw that his work with evolutionary sciences actually confirmed and inspired his faith in the cosmic Christ. Nor do they believe the views of Catholic priest Fr. Thomas Berry, a cultural historian and eco-theologian, that the cosmological 13 billion year "Universe Story" provides all faiths and all traditions a single account by which the divine has made its presence in the world.

Proponents of YEC are regularly accused of quote mining, the practice of isolating passages from academic texts that appear to support their claims while deliberately excluding context and conclusions to the contrary.[64]

Theological

Some theologians oppose the proposition that God can be a legitimate or viable subject for scientific experimentation, and reject a literal interpretation of Genesis. They propose there are statements in the creation week itself which render the historical interpretation of Genesis incompatible with scientific evidence.

One example is that God created the Earth and heavens, and light, on Day 1, plant life on Day 3, and the sun and moon on Day 4. One must ask where the light in Day 1 came from, and why there were plants in Day 3 if the sun, which provides all light to the Earth, did not even exist until Day 4.[65] YECs such as Basil the Great and John Calvin answered this by suggesting that the light created by God on Day 1 was the light source. Answers in Genesis has refined this by suggesting that the Earth was already rotating with respect to this light.[66] One can also make a case that God created the plants toward the evening of Day 3, the Sun was created on the morning of Day 4, therefore the plants only had to endure darkness for a period not much longer than a typical night.

Another problem is the fact that distant galaxies can be seen. If the universe did not exist until 10,000 years ago, then light from anything farther than 10,000 light-years would not have time to reach us. Most cosmologists accept an inflation model as the likely explanation for the horizon problem. Inflationary models also account for other phenomena, and are in agreement with observations of recent microwave anisotropy satellites. Creationists have also proposed models to explain why we see distant starlight.[67][68] See creationist cosmologies and the starlight problem for more information.

Many critics claim that Genesis itself is internally inconsistent on the question of whether man was created before the animals or after the animals as stated in Genesis. Proponents of the Documentary hypothesis suggest that Genesis 1 was a litany from the Priestly source (possibly from an early Jewish liturgy) while Genesis 2 was assembled from older Jahwist material, holding that for both stories to be a single account, Adam would have named all the animals, and God would have created Eve from his rib as a suitable mate, all within a single 24 hour period. Many creationists attribute this view to misunderstanding having arisen from poor translation of the tenses in Genesis 2 in contemporary translations of the Bible (e.g. compare "planted" and "had planted" in KJV and NIV).[69]
Some Christians assert that the Bible is free from error only in religious and moral matters, and that where scientific questions are concerned, the Bible should not be read literally. This position is held by a number of major denominations. For instance, in a publication entitled The Gift of Scripture,[70] the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales comments that "We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision". The Bible is held to be true in passages relating to human salvation, but "We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters."[71] By contrast, YECs contend that moral and spiritual matters in the Bible are intimately connected with its historical accuracy; in their view, the Bible stands or falls as a single indivisible block of knowledge.[72]

Aside from the theological doubts voiced by other Christians, YEC also stands in opposition to the creation mythologies of other religions (both extant and extinct). Many of these make claims regarding the origin of the universe and humanity that are completely incompatible with those of Christian creationists (and with one another).[73]

Responses to criticisms

Young Earth creationist responses to criticisms from atheistic evolutionists, theistic evolutionists, progressive creationists, and others include the following:

The young Earth view is just one interpretation of the Bible.

The young Earth view is the clear intention of the authors of the Bible. See Creation week for more. Also, the young Earth view was the view of most of the church throughout most of its history. That has only changed in order to accommodate non-biblical views of history.

Creationists read the Bible literally, whereas parts, such as the creation account, are really metaphor.

Creationists deny that they read all the Bible literally, and accept that there are metaphors and other non-literal passages in the Bible. Instead, they read the Bible the way it was meant to be understood, which in the case of the creation account, is as literal history. See Biblical exegesis above and Creation week for more.

Evolution has scientific evidence, and creationism does not.

Both creationists and evolutionists have the same evidence. The difference is in how that evidence is interpreted.

Creation relies on faith, not evidence.

Both creation and evolution are faith positions based on different worldviews. Evolutionists exclude God from consideration a priori, not because of the evidence.

The evidence in favor of evolution means the Earth must be much older than the 6-10 thousand years explained in creation science.

It is difficult to conceive of a mechanism by which any kind of biological "dating" mechanism could remain accurate in face of the supposedly changing levels of chemicals and solar radiation that evolutionary geologists insist upon. Even the most dedicated Darwin followers in the ranks of academia have been forced to admit that Carbon-14 dating can be wildly inaccurate for several reasons, such as naturally occurring radioactive elements in the Earth's crust.[74] This is just one area of the theory of evolution which scientists have had to back away from with much embarassment. Perhaps if scientists could adopt a more open-minded tone towards those they disagree with, they could issue retractions without such fear of retribution.

If creation had scientific merit, why don't they publish their evidence in peer-reviewed scientific papers?

The scientific establishment won't allow creationists to publish. See Suppression of alternatives to evolution. Some journals purport to accept material from all scientific perspectives, but engage in a process known as sham peer review. In normal peer review, papers are checked by two editors, independently, for methodological errors ONLY, not vetted for their content. That is the responsibility of the scientific public. During sham peer review, editors often collaborate to block publication of any literature that challenges established dogma, or their own pet theories. To make the problem worse, due to the incestuous nature of the mainstream journal editor pool, the same editor may serve on as many as a dozen different editorial boards, allowing them to spread their bias across a much larger area than an ethical editor would. Though this is widely acknowledged as a deceitful practice, its scope is widely downplayed in the scientific community and is actually almost openly tolerated in some areas of science.[75]

Creationists start with a preconception and try and fit the evidence to that. Evolutionists start with the evidence.

Both creationists and evolutionists have their worldview as a starting point. Evolutionists try and fit the evidence into their idea just as much as they accuse the creationists of doing.

Because they are based on the Bible, creationists are not willing to change their views. Evolutionists will change their views as new evidence is found.

Creationists start with the Bible as the foundation of their views, but beyond that are willing to change their views as new evidence is found. Evolutionists are willing to change the details of how evolution works, but are not prepared to change their basic view that evolution did occur.

Creationists are anti-science.

Many creationists are scientists and fully support science. They never reject science itself, and the criticism is bogus.

Arguments for a recent creation

Many arguments for a recent creation have been put forward by creationary scientists, both scientific and theological arguments.

Scientific arguments include radiometric dating results that disagree with secular ages, other dating methods that do not fit with secular ages, and phenomenon showing events that occurred quickly.

There should be virtually no 14C present in carbon supposedly older than 100,000 years, yet it has proved impossible to find any such carbon without 14C.

Dating methods don't have to be based on radioactivity.
Measuring the amount of sodium in sea water, for example, and calculating how long it would take to reach those levels is another method.
Yet calculations show that the amount of sodium could not have taken longer than 62 million years to accumulate, well short of the 3,000 million year supposed age of the oceans.

Polystrate fossils demonstrate that many layers of sedimentary rock that are normally supposed to take a long time to form can be formed quite quickly.

Adherents of Young Earth Creationism

Young Earth Creationism is a subset of Creationism most commonly found among members of the Abrahamic religions, especially Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (for details please see: Creationism). In regards to early Judaism and early Christianity,
early Judaism supported young earth creationism and a majority of the early church fathers held the young earth creationist view.[76]

Amanda2324 writes at YouTube: "LOVE THESE QUESTIONS!!! Like I'm in Physical Geography and Logic & Critical Thinking classes, and the teachers always mention something that either directly﻿ or indirectly refers to evolution. I may bring a copy of these with me to my classes from now on..."[2]

MrCody writes at YouTube: "I wished you told me this back in February when i was being taught about evolution. I wished i could﻿ have asked my teacher all those just to make her feel stupid."[3]

Further reading

J.D. Mitchell, The Creation Dialogues - A Response to the Position of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Evolution, Christianity and the Bible, Pleasant Word (Winepress Pub), 2010 ISBN 1414118007[82][83]